Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Iraq snapshot

Wednesday, February 20, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, the rivalry
between State of Law and Iraqiya continues, protests continue, Lawrence
Wilkerson continues to be both a public embarrassment and a public
menace, and more.

Yesterday we talked about basic history. Someone's ignorance
of basic history -- especially basic history broadcast over the public
airwaves and entered into the Congressional Record -- really is on them.

Yes,
we're talking about Lawrence Wilkerson again, Colin Powell's chief of
staff. So Brad Blog whimpered to David Swanson that it wasn't fair to
write about Wilkerson without getting a comment from him. I suppose
it's not fair to write about Watergate without a rebuttal from G. Gordon
Liddy? Wilkerson's comments/lies are all over the place already. But
Wilkerson apparently stopped humping his body pillow with Colin Powell's
face on it long enough to write and here's some of his latest nonsense:

Several
misleading and even spurious bullets and headlines that make strong claims that
are not supported in the surrounding narrative. For example, no one ever DID
warn Powell about Curveball, in fact quite the opposite. This particular
source--billed as an Iraqi engineer who had defected--was George Tenet's--the
DCI's--strongest weapon. And incidentally, the title "Curveball" was never
heard until well after the 5 Feb presentation.

Your use
of INR's assessment of "weak" repeatedly, is weak itself. INR was at the time
one of 15 intelligence entities in the US intelligence architecture at the
federal level. (Add Israel France, the UK, Jordan, Germany, et al, and of
course you get even more). INR's assessments were often viewed--indeed still
are--as maverick within that group (and were particularly so viewed by George
Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin. Indeed, INR's insistence on putting a
footnote in the October 2002 NIE with regard to its doubts about Saddam's having
an active nuclear weapons program was only grudgingly acknowledged and allowed
by Tenet. And in truth, INR itself concurred in the overall NIE's finding that
chems and bios existed (and the NIE was the root document of Powell's 5 Feb
presentation).

He can't even lie well. The
strongest 'weapon' -- oh, how little boys who can't keep their hands out
of their pants in public love to 'weaponize' everything -- the State
Dept and Colin Powell had was the INR? What group is the idiot speaking
of? He's not speaking of the State Dept. The INR is the report that
State produces so if you're the Secretary of State, that's your report.
As Greg Thielmann explained it to Harry Shearer (Le Show) last month:

One agency, Colin
Powell’s own agency, the intelligence bureau of the State
Department, said that the evidence did not support that conclusion. That
is, that the evidence showed that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. And of all the various assessments about chemical weapons, about
biological weapons, about missiles, that was the most critical
assessment. And the State Department not only dissented, as the State
Department would sometimes do, with an asterisk and a one-liner, it was
basically a dissent with the entire judgment requiring a lot of words
and was on the front page of the executive summary of the estimate. It
was on the one-pager that went to the president of the United States.
And that should raise alarm bells, not because the State Department
intelligence bureau is always right, although I would argue that INR,
which is its acronym, INR was more often right than not when we
dissented from the majority, but that Colin Powell in particular, who
knew or should have known from our memoranda and from his conversations
with the head of our bureau the reasons, the detailed reasons why the
evidence was not sound behind that conclusion.

Wilkerson
wants to talk Curveball? Reality, a defector is rarely an objective
source because, pay attention Wilkerson, "defecting" generally requires a
reason. Here's The American Prospect on Colin and Curveball:To review: In February 2003, noted motivational speaker Colin Powell
went before the United Nations and delivered a terrifying presentation
demonstrating that Iraq was brimming with horrific weapons of mass
destruction, all poised to launch at the United States and who knows who
else, obviously some time within the next 10 minutes or so, and
therefore we just had no choice but to invade. Much of Powell's case was
built on the allegations of "Curveball," a person who had left Iraq
five years before and whom U.S. intelligence officials had never
interrogated. He was interviewed by German intelligence officials, who
passed them to the Americans while insisting that they were probably
bogus, as indeed they turned out to be. But everything he said was
assumed by the administration to be 100 percent true -- Powell even
showed computer animations of mobile chemical weapons labs, based on
Curveball's invented stories. Powell's show included lots of other
falsehoods and intentionally misleading claims, from those "nuclear"
aluminum tubes to phantom VX nerve gas to nonexistent long-range
missiles (there's a good run-down here).

Let's go to the 60 Minutes II
report, originally aired October 15, 2003, entitled "The Man Who Knew:
Former Powell Chief of Intelligence and Others Disagree With Evidence
Presented to UN for War In Iraq." We'll start with an excerpt to
establish who Greg Thielmann is.SCOTT PELLEY (co-host): In
the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point:
the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to
make the case for the invasion. Millions of us watched as he laid out
the evidence and reached a damning conclusion: that Saddam Hussein was
in possession of weapons of mass destruction. But the man you will hear
from tonight says that key evidence in that speech war misrepresented
and the public was deceived. Greg Thielmann should know. He had been
Powell's own chief on intelligence when it came to Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction. When you saw Secretary of State Powell make his
presentation to the United Nations, what did you think?

Mr. GREG
THIELMANN: I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a -- a more
mature reaction. I -- I think my conclusion now is that it's probably
one of the low points in his long and distinguished service to the
nation.

PELLEY: At the end of the speech, the United Nations and the American people had been misinformed, in your opinion?

Mr. THIELMANN: I think so.

PELLEY:
Greg Thielmann was a foreign service officer for 25 years. His last
job at the State Department was acting director of Office of Strategic
Proliferation and Military Affairs, responsible for analyzing the Iraqi
weapons threat for Secretary Powell. You and your staff had the highest
security clearances.

Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.

PELLEY: And you saw virtually everything.

Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.

PELLEY: Whether it came in to the CIA or the Defense Department, it all came through your office sooner or later.

Mr. THIELMANN: That's right, yes.

A
note on the above, it's actually "PELLEY. Whether . . ." but I've used
the colon we use normally. In the next section I'll add the opening of a
set of parenthesis (when Bush is quoted) but other than that and the
colon for the period, we're reproducing as is (or we've got a typo). As
is on the CBS News website?

CBS News doesn't have a transcript
or a video. All they have is a write up. We're pulling this from the
Congressional Record. Then-Senator Jon Corzine introduced the segment
into the Congressional Record the day after it aired. PELLEY:
Theilmann says that's what the intelligence really showed. [That Iraq
"didn't even constitute an imminent threat to its neighbors".] For
example, he points to the evidence behind Powell's charge that Iraq was
importing these aluminum tubes to use in a program to build nuclear
weapons.

Sec. POWELL: (From UN speech) Saddam Hussein is
determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that
eh's made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification
aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspection
resumed.

Mr. THEIMANN: This is one of the most disturbing parts of Secretary Powell's speech for us.

PELLEY:
The tubes were intercepted by intelligence agents in 2001. The CIA
said that they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium, fuel for
an atomic bomb. But Thiemann wasn't so sure. Experts at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, the scientists who enrich uranium for American
bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program. At
about the same time, Thielmann's office was working on another
explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an
Iraqi conventional rocket.

Mr. THIELMANN: The aluminum was e--exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery.

PELLEY: And you sent that word up to the secretary of State --

Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.

PELLEY: Many months before.

Mr. THIELMANN: That's right.

Mr. HOUSTON WOOD: You'll see where it intersects. This is the velocity.

PELLEY:
Houston Wood was a consultant who worked on the Oak Ridge analysis of
the tubes. He watched Powell's speech, too. When you saw the
presentation in full wi-with regard to the aluminum tubes, what were you
thinking?

Mr. WOOD: I guess I was angry. I think that's
probably the best emotion that I -- best way to describe my emotions. I
was angry at that.

PELLEY: Wood is among the world's
authorities on uranium enrichment by centrifuge. He found that the
tubes couldn't be what the CIA thought they were. They were too heavy,
three times too thick and certain to leak.

Mr. WOOD: It wasn't going to work. No, they would -- they would have failed.

PELLEY:
Wood reached that conclusion back in 2001. Thielmann reported to
Secretary Powell's office that he was confident the tubes were not for a
nuclear program. Then about a year later, when the administration was
building a case for war, the tubes were resurrected on the front page of
The New York Times.

Mr. WOOD: I thought when I read that,
"There must be some other tubes that people were talking about." I--I
just wa--was flabbergasted that people were still pushing that those
might be centrifuges.

PELLEY: Flabbergasted?

Mr. WOOD: Yeah. Yeah. So it just didn't -- it didn't make any sense to me.

PELLEY:
The New York times reported that senior administration officials
insisted the tubes were for an atom bomb program. Was it clear to you
that science wasn't pushing this forward?

Mr. WOOD: Yes. That's
a very good way to put it. Science was not pushing this forward.
Scientists had made their evaluation and made their determination and
now we didn't know what was happening.

PELLEY: In his UN
speech, Secretary Powell acknowledged there was disagreement about the
tubes, but he said most experts agreed with the nuclear theory.

Sec.
POWELL (From UN speech) There is controversy about what those tubes are
for. Most US experts think that they are intended to serve as rotors
in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Mr. WOOD: Most experts are located in Oak Ridge, and that was not the position there.

PELLEY:
Do you know one in academia, in government, in a foreign country who
disagrees with your appraisal, who says, "Yes, these are for nuclear
weapons?"

Mr. WOOD: I don't know a single one anywhere.

PELLEY:
Greg Thielmann says the nuclear case was filled with half-truths. If
the secretary took the information that his own intelligence bureau had
developed and turned it on its head, which is what you're saying, to
what end?

Mr. THIELMANN: I can only assume that he was doing it
to loyally support the president of the United States and build the
strongest possible case for arguing that there was no alternative to the
use of military force.

PELLEY: That was a case that the
president himself was making only eight days before Secretary Powell's
speech, but the argument in the State of the Union address turned out to
be too strong.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From State of the
Union) The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence
sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum
tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

PELLEY: After
the war, the White House said the African uranium claim was false and
shouldn't have been in the president's address, but at the time, it was
part of a campaign that painted the intelligence as irrefutable.

Vice
President DICK CHENEY: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has
weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them
to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.

PELLEY:
But if there was no doubt in public, Greg Thielmann says there was
plenty of doubt in the intelligence community. He says the
administration took murky information out of the gray areas and made it
black and white.

Sec. POWELL (From UN speech) My colleagues,
every statement I make today is backed up by sources -- solid sources.
What we're giving you are facts and conclusion based on solid
intelligence.

Sec.
POWELL (From UN speech) Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today
has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent.
That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.

PELLY: And part of that stockpile, he said, was clearly in these bunkers.

Sec.
POWELL: (From UN speech) The four that are in red squares represent
active chemical munitions bunkers. How do I know that? How can I say
that? Let me give you a closer look.

PELLEY: Up close, Powell
said, you could see a truck used for cleaning up chemical spills, a
signature he called it, for a chemical bunker.

Mr.
THIELMANN: My understanding is that these vehicles were simply fire
trucks that you cannot really describe as being a unique signature.

Colin
Powell lied. Instead of repeatedly embarrassing himself in public,
Wilkerson should just grab his body pillow with Colin Powell's face on
it and hump away in private. The people who keep pimping liar Wilkerson
need to start taking accountability. There was never reason to. Those
working in the intelligence aspect of State went public in 2003.
Wilkerson's lies do not match the public record and, when he talks about
Colin, he sounds like a little ten-year-old with a serious crush on Zayn Malik.

While Colin Powell was lying, millions around the world were protesting against the impending illegal war. The Iraq Times notes
that Spain has just seen a number of meetings and seminars in Barcelona
on the tenth anniversary of the global protest (February 15, 2003) that
millions participated in. Aturem la Guerra (Stop The War) spokesperson
Pilar Massana is quoted decrying the crime against Iraq and the Iraqi
people which has led to the deaths of many innocents and a country in
ruin. As Giles Tremlett and Sophie Arie (Guardian) reported in March of 2003, "The Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, the third man on the
international stage beside George Bush and Tony Blair in the run-up to
war, was staring at political disaster yesterday as anti-war
demonstrations spread and opinion polls revealed 91% of Spaniards
against the war." And after the illegal war started, protesters in Spain didn't vanish. Reuters noted
that 4 years after the start of the Iraq War, Spanish protesters still
turned out and this after they'd effected real change in their country,
"Aznar was voted out of power days after the attacks, along with his
conservative Popular Party. Spain's
incoming socialist government, led by Prime Minister Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero, pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq. Zapatero has
refused to send additional Spanish troops to Afghanistan, despite demands from NATO members."

Just over ten years ago, I was one dot in a crowd of one million people
in London calling for the Labour government of Tony Blair to stop the
Iraq war. We all knew that Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator who
was much-hated in his own country but we knew equally well that the case
for invasion of Iraq (it was never a ‘war’) was a gigantic deceit,
cooked up by the Blair and Bush governments for their own purposes. We
knew that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. We knew that far
from being a friend of Al Qaeda and the Islamicists, Saddam was their
sworn enemy and near the top of their death list. But these were
‘inconvenient truths’.As I walked alongside Charles and Sarah Kennedy, Donnachadh McCarthy and
Simon Hughes at the front of the Liberal Democrat contingent in the
march, I thought to myself: “Wow! This is the biggest gathering of
humanity in the UK since the Isle of Wight Pop Festival in 1969:and we
haven’t even got Jimmy Hendrix or Joni Mitchell as a ‘draw’ . How can
they ignore something as huge as THIS?”The bottom line was, the Blair/Bush agenda was so-fixed-in-stone that
they would have ignored something twice or three times as big. They were
totally prepared for both the massive slaughter of the innocents which
took place in the immediate invasion period, and also the perpetual drip
drip drip of casualties caused by suicide bombers and insurgents – and
the Coalition ‘policing actions’ in the ten subsequent years. They were
equally prepared for the homicide of ‘truth’. In fact, they were busy
mixing the poisoned pills.

Andrew Murray (Gulf News) adds:But British democracy took a body blow too. The shadow of the largest
demonstration in British history - an estimated attendance of two
million was supported by two independent opinion polls taken the
following week - still hangs over democratic politics.

If politicians wonder why they are held in such low esteem, it is not
just their fiddling of expenses, nor their prolonged bipartisan
infatuation with bankers and Rupert Murdoch. The rot began with the
dodgy dossier, the “45-minute” Iraqi missile threat, the duplicitous
diplomacy, and the decision to ignore the wishes of their own voters in
preference to those of George Bush. Mainstream politics bought public
contempt with the blood of millions.

Rome was thought to have
had the largest February 15, 2003 protest -- and the largest anti-war
protest in history -- with three million people taking part. Protests
took place throughout the US. Dick Bernard (Daily Planet) offers
a photo essay of the February 15, 2003 protest in Minneapolis. There
was nothing in the US on the tenth anniversary of the protests. There
was no effort to create anything, there was no effort to even note it
really. How come? Because the peace organizations of 2003 weren't
peace organizations. MoveOn, United for Peace and Justice, Win Without
War, etc. They were anti-Bush organizations, they were elect Democrats
organizations, but they weren't concerned with ending the war. Earlier this month, Cindy Sheehan was under the weather and her radio program Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox dug into the archives for a 2011 interview done by RT's Abby Martin.
If you have no idea how the peace movement was used by various
organizations, listen to Cindy explain it. While still at the first
Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, Win Without War lost all interest in her
because she wouldn't support their proposal of a Congressional measure
that called for Out of Iraq . . . Someday . . . Hopefully Soon . . . But
If Not, Okay. United for Peace and Justice didn't want anymore
protests after the November 2006 elections gave Democrats control of
both houses of Congress. They didn't want to embarrass the Democrats?
Embarrass?

First off a peace organization is
supposed to call for an end to war. As for it embarrassing Democrats,
grasp what UPFJ (Leslie Cagan and a bunch of other frauds) was saying:
Calling for an end to war would embarrass Democratic politicians.
Because? Clearly UPFJ knew, before Dems got control of both houses,
that the Democratic Party they backed was not interested
in ending the war. Leslie Cagan and others need to be held
accountable. First step, don't ever trust them again. Don't listen to
them. They whored and they lied. They pretended to give a damn about
the Iraqi people. If their behavior was embarrassing after the November
2006 elections, it was especially embarrassing after the 2008 election
when they all packed up their tents and went home.

Protests are not new to Iraq. And unlike Leslie Cagan, Iraqis actually risk a great deal to protest. You might think this is from the days of Saddam Hussein:

We, feminist activists from 12 countries, stand in support of our
sisters and brothers peacefully demonstrating for basic rights in
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. This morning, June 10, demonstrators were brutally targeted
with sexual violence and beatings by men who were reportedly bussed
in by the thousands to disrupt the weekly protest. Protesters suffered
broken bones, knife wounds and beatings. Several women were severely
beaten and violently groped; armed attackers attempted to forcibly
strip off the women’s clothing. The activists, who work with the
Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, report that their attackers
were organized and paid by government security forces who used the
un-uniformed men to avoid accountability for the violence. As feminists, we strongly condemn assaults against peaceful
protesters and the specifically gender-based violence against women.
As in so many of our countries, the use of sexual violence against
Iraqi women is designed to terrorize, shame and silence those women
who dare to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens and raise
political demands in the public sphere. We stand with our sisters who
exercise their rights to political participation and dissent.Today’s attacks represent a noted escalation of violence
against protesters in Iraq as well as a crime and a fundamental
violation of human rights. We call on the government to uphold its
obligations to guarantee freedom of peaceful assembly and to respond
to the demands of demonstrators.

NPR's Kelly McEvers interviewed him for Morning Edition
after he had been released and she noted he had been "beaten in the
leg, eyes, and head." He explained that he was accused of attempting to
"topple" Nouri al-Maliki's government -- accused by the soldiers under
Nouri al-Maliki, the soldiers who beat him. Excerpt:

Hadi
al-Mahdi: I replied, I told the guy who was investigating me, I'm
pretty sure that your brother is unemployed and the street in your area
is unpaved and you know that this political regime is a very corrupt
one.

Kelly
McEvers: Mahdi was later put in a room with what he says were about 200
detainees, some of them journalists and intellectuals, many of them
young protesters.

Hadi
al-Mahdi: I started hearing voices of other people. So, for instance,
one guy was crying, another was saying, "Where's my brother?" And a
third one was saying, "For the sake of God, help me."

Kelly
McEvers: Mahdi was shown lists of names and asked to reveal people's
addresses. He was forced to sign documents while blindfolded.
Eventually he was released. Mahdi says the experience was worse than
the times he was detained under Saddam Hussein. He says the regime
that's taken Sadam's place is no improvement on the past. This, he says,
should serve as a cautionary tale for other Arab countries trying to
oust dictators.

Hadi
al-Mahdi: They toppled the regime, but they brought the worst -- they
brought a bunch of thieves, thugs, killers and corrupt people, stealers.

In Iraq, a journalist has been murdered. In addition
to being a journalist, he was also a leader of change and part of the
movement to create an Iraq that was responsive to Iraqis.

Al Mada reports
Iraqi journalist Hadi al-Mahdi is dead according to an Interior
Ministry source who says police discovered him murdered in his Baghdad
home. Along with being a journalist, Al Mada notes he was one of the
chief organizers of the demonstrations demanding change and service
reform that began on February 25th -- the day he was arrested by Iraqi
security forces and beaten in broad daylight as he and others, after the
February 25th protest, were eating in a restaurant. The New York Times didn't want to tell you about, the Washington Post
did. And now the man is dead. Gee, which paper has the archives that
matter to any real degree. Maybe it's time to act like a newspaper and
not a "news magazine" with pithy little human interest stories? (That
is not a dig at Tim Arango but at the paper's diva male 'reporter' who
went on NPR to talk of an Iraqi college this week.) So while the Times
missed the story (actaully, they misled on the story -- cowtowing to
Nouri as usual), Stephanie McCrummen (Washington Post) reported:Four
journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after
they had left a protest at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were
handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by
soldiers from an army intelligence unit. "It
was like they were dealing with a bunch of al-Qaeda operatives, not a
group of journalists," said Hussam al-Ssairi, a journalist and poet, who
was among a group and described seeing hundreds of protesters in black
hoods at the detention facility. "Yesterday was like a test, like a
picture of the new democracy in Iraq."
You'll never
convince me Nouri al-Maliki wasn't behind the assassination of Hadi.
It's been over two years now and Hadi's killer's never been found. Yet
earlier this week, you saw an intelligence officer killed and today's
news cycle was the government bragging that they had caught the
murderer. In Nouri's Iraq, the police 'catch' who they want to.

Despite
the above and so much more, Iraqis continue to protest. This despite
numerous attempts by Nouri and his forces to stop them. January 25th, Nouri's forces began shooting at Falluja protesters -- the death toll would reach eleven.
That didn't stop the protests. They call it the Iraqi Spring and they
protest despite the fact that so much risk is involved in protesting in
Iraq. Al Mada notes
that yesterday was day sixty of the protests and that Anbar Province
demonstrators are calling for the tribal leaders to stand with them. In
recent days, Nouri's Tigris Operation Command has attempted to
intimidate the tribal leaders. Baquba protesters say they are prepared to continue
protesting but that they are fearful of what Nouri's Tigris Operation
Command forces will do them.

The Maliki government has repeatedly claimed it is “considering” the protesters demands, but its only visible actions have been military moves to stall protests and public threats against the protesters.Leaders say if there is not action soon they will hold a full scale
march on Baghdad, aimed at grinding government operations to a halt and
forcing parliament to follow through on calls for early elections.

Among the demands protesters have made is calling for, the release of innocents who have been disappeared
into the 'justice' system. Article IX of the Constitution is a problem
as well because it adds to innocents arrested by allowing you to be
arrested merely for being related to a suspect -- you can be the mother
of someone suspected of a crime and be arrested because you're the
mother (or father, brother, sister, child, grandparent, etc). Dar Addustour reports
that the Ministry of the Interior is bragging that they have released
1077 people accused of 'terrorism.' If you're thinking, "1077? That
seems smaller than the numbers a gullible western press was pimping a
few weeks back," you're not wrong.

3,000 was the claim in early February.
But thing was, the provinces were asking, "Where are these people?"
Because they weren't seeing a huge influx returning. And then the
provinces began demanding that the Ministry provide a list of names of
the released which the Ministry refused to do earlier. Dar Addustour
publishes the list (PDF format) here and here. Once a list was provided, the numbers dropped, didn't they?

Because when no proof is required Nouri can -- and will -- say anything. Al Mada notes
that the 1077 are released. There are others that are 'transferred'
and being considered for release. Nouri's laughable committee -- headed
by the joke that is Hussain al-Shahristani -- is claiming higher
numbers but refusing to release a list of names saying that will come
later.

Is it a promise? Like when Nouri promised to honor The Erbil
Agreement? Or like when Nouri promised in Feb. 2011 that if protesters
stopped protesting and gave him 100 days, he would meet their demands?
Nouri never honored The Erbil Agreement and he never met the protesters
demands. So promises from his flunky al-Shahristani aren't worth
anything.

With all they've faced -- including the illegal US war -- Iraqis still take to the street to make their voices heard. Al Mada reports
that activists in Anbar Province and Diyala Province are being watched
and followed by Nouri's security forces. Generally, this is to
intimidate. But this can also be where -- as happened during the 2011
protests -- Iraqis start disappearing. Members of Nouri's own Cabinet,
it's worth remembering, have stated Nouri has the technology to listen
in on cell phones and that he often does.

Still on Anbar Province, Al Rafidayn reports
that the provincial council has sent out a distress call for
international medical and humanitarian agencies asking for help in
handling the issue of the increased birth defects in Falluja which have
only increased and become even more alarming in the last six months.
Deputy Chair of the Provincial Council Saadoun Obeid al-Shalan states
that they have appealed to the Council of Ministers and to the Ministry
of Health and Human Rights for years now but nothing is being done so
now they are calling on the European Union countries and the United
Nations and other children, medical and humanitarian organizations to
come to Falluja and help address the problem. You'll note the US is
left out. There's a reason for that. As he explains, the white
phosphorus and other weapons the US forces used on Falluja in 2004 and
2005 are said to be responsible for the birth defects. The article
states Falluja couples are becoming afraid to have children due to the
huge number of birth defects the region is experiencing.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, Alsumaria reports,
children are working on the streets and in the factories and child
labor is on the rise in the capital. The estimate is at least 1500
children are working in Baghdad. This is a result of the lack of
subsidies and sufficient subsidies for widows and orphans and families
in general. Iraq is a land of orphans and widows as a result of the
Iraq War.

Supposedly the political scene's about to get more complicated. From Tuesday:

As messy as the ongoing violence is the political situation. Last week,
the President of the Federal Court, Medhat al-Mahmoud, was judged a
Ba'athist and removed from office and Nouri named a successor. Today Alsumaria is reporting
that the decree of Ba'athist has been revoked by a panel according to
the Justice and Accountability's Deputy Chair Bakhtiar Omar al-Qadhi. Kitabat reports that Nouri pressured the committee to overturn the decision. The Iraq Times notes
that al-Mahmoud was given 25,000 squre meters of land by Nouri who
cited the judge's efforts of government service when making the gift (on
behalf of the Iraqi people -- it was their land, not Nouri's). The
article also notes that al-Mahmoud was originally selected for his
postion by Paul Bremer who was the Bwana or viceroy over Iraq in the
initial stages of the war. All Iraq News quotes
a statement that Nouri issued declaring that the Justice and
Accountability Commission has no documents backing up the accusation
that al-Mahmoud is Ba'athist.
If you can follow the back-and-forth of 'He's a Ba'athist/No, he's not'
decrees, let's move into the issue of the body itself. The head of the
Justice and Accountability Commission was Falah Shanshal. Then Nouri
fired him at the start of the week. As Wael Grace (Al Mada) reports,
Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi has made him the head of the
commission again and stated that Nouri didn't have the power to fire him
(and replace him with a member of Dawa -- Nouri's political party). All Iraq News reports
that other members of the commission are blocking Shanshal from
assuming his position as head of the Committee. Can you follow the
various developments regarding the Justice and Accountability
Commission? All Iraq News offers this back and forth of various people making claims and counter-claims. On the issue of 'justice,' Alsumaria reports
Iraqiya MP Haider Mulla is decrying the fact that arrest warrants are
being issued by State of Law MPs and not by judges -- he states this
backs up claims that the judiciary has been politicized.

Following an attempt by Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi to
restore the dismissed head of the Justice and Accountability Committee
to his post, in a clear challenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Maliki’s supporters are seeking to oust Nujaifi.

Nujaifi recently ordered that Falah Shanshal resume his position as the
head of the Justice and Accountability Committee, a day after his
dismissal by Maliki.

Al-Monitor was able to secure a copy of an official press
statement titled “Directive” in which Nujaifi stated that the “election
of Shanshal and his deputy Bakhtiar Omar by the members of the Justice
and Accountability Committee was legal. The committee is exclusively
associated with the parliament.”
Maliki and Nujaifi have been fighting over the power to supervise
independent committees including the Judicial Council, the Justice and
Accountability Committee, the Electoral Committee and the Human Rights
Committee.

Nouri's a member of the Dawa political party.
He's a Shi'ite and he formed his own political slate after becoming
prime minister, refusing to run with Dawa (which in 2010 floated
balloons about kicking him out) and instead he created State of Law.
That political slate came in second in the parliamentary elections of
2010 to Iraqiya which is headed by Ayad Allawi. Like al-Maliki, Allawi
is Shi'ite. Osama al-Nujaifi is Sunni (as his brother Atheel, the
Governor of Nineveh Province). He belongs to Iraqiya. The two are
political rivals. Nouri has yet to try arrest warrants on al-Nujaifi
but his State of Law has repeatedly stated they were voting him out of
office. That includes last week. They didn't have the votes. It's
very unlikely that they'll have the votes now. Nouri's hugely
unpopular.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.